


From this point forward

by alwayshesitant



Series: Sentimental Experimental [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: KakaObi, M/M, Minor Side Characters, aaaa fix it fic with lots of feels, honestly its bad, short fic, sorry obligatory fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 06:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6693799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwayshesitant/pseuds/alwayshesitant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Obito decides to use his ten-tails power for the side of good, and the events that happen afterward with one Hatake Kakashi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From this point forward

**From this point; Forward**

 

Summary:

AU where Obito decides to use his ten-tails power for the side of good, and the events that happen afterward.

Short and obligatory fic; 

* * *

.

.

It was finally over. 

One final blow from the Ten-tails jinchuuriki, and he watches the fragile frame of the very man who threatened the existence of whatever Kakashi had left, _Madara,_ crumble and drop to the ground.

The sickening sound the body makes; something cruel and satisfied curls inwards.

Too many dead, too many lost, in a battle for what? Politically corrupted old men and their power squabbles? For a madman, lost with grief, misplaced and misdirected? For conflicts that lasted ages long, time running backwards, to ancestors who decided that war was always better than peace? 

Kakashi dropped the bloody kunai, ignores the sweat streaking down the sides of his arm, and runs towards a fallen figure.

Obito lies on the ground, bones a little too broken for Kakashi’s liking, his face smeared with dirt, his features pliant in the claws of exhaustion.

Kakashi cradles Obito close to his body, breathing in deep breaths ( _one, two, three- out, one, two- in, one, two, three),_ praying, hands trembling, as he presses his fingers against Obito’s carotid artery.

_Anything, please, gods, anything._

Kakashi doesn’t feel anything at first, and for a brief, traitorous moment, Kakashi feels his own heart drop.

_I’ll give in anything, Rin, Rin I promise, please help me._

He calls out desperately, to whoever was up there, whoever was watching over him.

The elders’ tales of guardian angels, of gods and deities, he had hated and scorned them for being so reliant on an unpredictable power when he was younger, but now, with so much at stake, he curses himself for not praying to them, perhaps they would have helped him now. 

( _he’s desperate. anything, would be fine. He just needs something)_

Suddenly, he feels two, weak beats. 

The bare thrum of life against his bloodstained fingers, and Kakashi’s hope skyrockets.

Perhaps, perhaps something right in his life would happen again, perhaps it was worth living it out, perhaps-

“Medic! I need a medic! Anyone, anyone, Sakura! Please…” Kakashi screams at the top of his lung, forgoing all poise and grace and dignity he’s held close to his heart, for help.

But he knows that there are too little of the medics and too many of the fallen for them to cover every single area. He knows that the likelihood of a free medic was near zero, and so he does the only thing he knows how to do. 

After mouth-administered CPR doesn’t do much good to Obito, Kakashi picks him up gently, careful to not misalign any of Obito’s already broken and battered bones, and carries him as swiftly as he can to any medical bay as a man with a dislocated arm and a few fractures on his legs in several different places as he can.

His leftover adrenaline soon runs out after Kakashi manages to drag the both of them to the nearest medical tent he can find, and after making sure that Obito is properly cared for (‘He needs help now, please, he’s going to die.’ ‘Calm down Kakashi, your hovering isn’t going to make things better.’), Kakashi collapses onto the floor from pure physical and chakra exhaustion.

 

* * *

.

.

_Rin cups his cheek with both her hands, tears streaming down her smiling face. He’s kneeling down, and as he looks at his hand plunged through Rin’s chest, horror fills the empty cavity in his chest._

_“It’s your fault, Kakashi, it’s all your faul..t…” she whispers, her voice gentle as always, her hands turning cold as ice, her throat gurgling as blood slides out in a stream, as it grows into a waterfall._

_Rin drops to the floor, body convulsing from the electricity left in her body, her eyes wide open with remnants of a tortured expression still fading from them, and Kakashi is too horror-struck to pull himself away from the body._

_The corpse looks up accusingly at him._

_He starts to scream, his voice burning a hole in his windpipe-_

_but it’s soundless._

_The world freezes like a black and white television tableau, not a sound, no birds chirping, no wind rustling._

_‘She’s dead she’s dead she’s dead she’s dead she’s dead’ Kakashi chants to himself, still frozen with his head between his hands. The words throw themselves outwards, the words pries his lips open and crowd his mouth, the words curl a fist around his neck-_

_and squeeze-_

‘-kashi! Kakashi-sensei!’ 

Kakashi attempts to sit up almost immediately, his instincts edging uncomfortably underneath his skin, and winces as a jot of pain shoots through his abdomen. 

Sakura waves a hand in front of his eyes (he blinks slowly), and sighs a breath of relief. 

“You were struggling pretty badly in your sleep Kakashi-sensei, are you okay?” Sakura asks, voice tinged with worry and exhaustion.

He takes a moment to properly look at Sakura, and notices her weak smile and her dark eyebags, and replies, ‘It was only a nightmare, what- what happened to Obito?’

Sakura sighs, running a hand through her matted hair with calloused and slightly trembling fingers. From stress or from sorrow, Kakashi decides he doesn’t want to know. 

“We drugged him pretty heavily in order to operate on him, his wounds were… bad, when you brought him to us, Kakashi-sensei,’ she pauses and looks out of the window wistfully, ‘we think that he has a pretty good chance of survival, but right now he’s in a comatose.’ 

Comatose. 

The word hits Kakashi right in the heart, and he slumps back into his bed. 

“Comatose… when will he wake up?” He asks quietly, and doesn’t dare to look up. Instead, he opts for his fingers to clench the white bedsheets till his knuckles turns the same shade.

Sakura doesn’t answer him straight away. She pauses for a moment, and whispers, barely audible, “We don’t know. It might take a day, it might take a month. It might take years, for all we know.”

Kakashi feels his heart drop even more. It might be lost, he might never find it again in the deep dark gorge. 

“I need to go, Kakashi-sensei. The other patients need me.” 

Sakura leaves him alone, but he doesn’t miss the concerned glance she shoots him as she gets up to leave. 

Kakashi blinks aways tears he never noticed, and adjusts himself so he feels more comfortable on the standard, scratchy hospital bed. 

The best he can do is to wait and hope.

 

* * *

.

.

By the time he’s allowed to leave his ward, Kakashi flees as far as he can away from the suffocating walls that have over the past two weeks, made him feel small and helpless and irritable. He flees from the dreams, he flees from his own thoughts. 

Officially given three months of break from ninja duties, Kakashi doesn’t hesitate.

It felt so good to feel sunlight on his skin and wind in his hair again, and after taking a long, cold shower in his tiny apartment, Kakashi, left with nothing to do, sits down and contemplates his next plan of action.

From what the nurses gossiped about, Obito hadn’t woken up yet. 

( _Obito might never wake up)_

He tells his mind to shut up, and steers it to more pressing matters.

What was he going to do after Obito woke up? Where would Obito live? 

_Well,_ he thought to himself, _he could stay with me. He has nowhere else to go, since the Uchiha class was wiped out._

And looking at the state of his apartment- dusty and unimaginably filthy, Kakashi had never thought of this as home, his home was on the battlefield, and his family were at one point, his weapons, and presently, his students. 

_His home,_ Kakashi thinks briefly, the words bitter and cold, _t_ he only place he thought of as home probably lay decaying somewhere.

Out of a misguided sense of nostalgia, especially after the war, Kakashi feels a slight duty to attend to it, no matter how much it stabbed at his heart.

A quick shunshin later, Kakashi finds his fingers absently running over the paint-chipped gates of the Hatake compound. 

The medium sized house which once belonged to his father (now his, his mind chides him gently), held many, many memories. 

Most of which, he never wanted to relive again. 

Ignoring the hammering of regret, of self-hatred and of guilt against his mind, he treads over the sprawling garden to enter the house. 

Most of the walls were covered in milder and moss, the wooden floorboards mostly rotten and the paper sliding doors caved in and a host to various communities of woodlice and silverfish. 

His old room, Kakashi noted with nostalgia, as he pushed the half-hinged door away. 

It looked bare as always, but a picture, yellowed at its edges, stood out notably amongst the hubris and rotting floorboards that dominated the entirety of the room. 

It was an old wedding photo of his father and mother, both clad in traditional robes and smiling so widely that you couldn’t see their eyes. 

Kakashi stares at it a little longer, and carefully, very carefully stores it in one of his sealing scrolls. 

A little part of him, something that he thought had always been buried, resurfaces. 

_I’m sorry,_ he thought to no one in particular. Perhaps to his parents, perhaps to his students, he didn’t know. _I’m so, so sorry. I’ve neglected you._

That little part of him feels lighter now, as if his admission of his wrongdoings had lightened the load on his shoulders, and the silent promise ( _I’ll try harder, I promise),_ hangs heavily in the air. 

He turns away, and shunshins back to his apartment. 

That night, he sleeps a little better.

 

* * *

.

.

“Uchiha Obito? Room 22, visiting hours end at eight at night.” The frazzled woman at the help desk answers hurriedly, before attending to the next person in line. 

Following the war, the hospital had been immensely busy. 

Streams of visitors made their way to check on their loved ones, and even more collected the bodies of the fallen to bury at home. 

And as soon as he entered Room 22, the pale and pallid colour of Obito’s face didn’t seem so different with the sheets.

He was hooked up to several different machines, and from what Kakashi had heard about, was the latest technology. 

The steady beeps assured him that Obito was alive, but Obito _didn’t_ look alive.

His hands were cold, and his chest even more so. His ribcage jutted out, and he looked too thin, too weak to have been the warrior to have prevented the end of the world. He looked so fragile, like a child in the swathe of sheets around his body. 

It was so _wrong, it was so wrong._

Kakashi feels something inside him tear a little. 

If only, if only he had listened to Obito at the Kannabi Bridge mission, if only he had listened. Nobody would have been harmed. Madara would never have gained power, Obito wouldn’t have had to suffer. Rin, sensei, Kushina, Naruto, none of them would have had to suffer or die. 

It was his fault. It was _all his fault._

Gripping Obito’s hand in between both of his, trying to breathe some spark of life back into Obito, he might just wake up. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” He chants, he repeats as if it’s a holy verse, as if it could bring Obito back. 

_Obito might stay like this forever, unmoving, unresponsive, like the dolls you hate, don’t you?_ A voice sniggers at the back of his mind, jeering at him. 

The nurse lets him stay at Obito’s side that night, and he ends up collapsing after his voice turns parchment dry.

 

* * *

.

.

“Kakashi,” Kakashi doesn’t turn to look at the figure leaning at one of the training mannequins a little distance away, and instead focuses on getting his fist connected to the dolls. 

“Kakashi,” the figure tries again, “Kakashi, don’t do this to yourself.” 

“Tenzou,” Kakashi acknowledges, and ignores his words as he continues to pummel the doll. 

Tenzou huffed a sigh of annoyance at his personal name being used, and instead walks over to Kakashi. 

“You’re bleeding, Senpai. You can’t continue anymore.” Tenzou frowns at the blood that drips steadily from Kakashi’s knuckles.

“It doesn’t matter.” Kakashi’s answer was short and succinct, but it didn’t seem to please Tenzou, judging from the way his brows crease. 

“Senpai, please don’t do this to yourself,” Tenzou tries to plead with him, tries to pry him away from the training puppet, “You won’t do anything, you’ll just end up hurting yourself even more.” 

_I don’t care,_ Kakashi thinks to himself, simmering anger settling at the bottom of his stomach. _I deserve it, anyway._

“Kakashi, you can’t do this to yourself, please, stop, it’s not going to help,” Tenzou tries to put distance between the puppet and Kakashi, but fails. 

Kakashi withdraws himself forcefully, almost furiously, refusing to let Tenzou touch anymore than he already has. 

“Who are you to stop me?” Kakashi asks icily, straightening to his full height and staring down impassively at Tenzou, “Who are you to stop me?” He repeats again. 

It seems to have shaken Tenzou a little, this self-deprecating and self-harming side of Kakashi something he hasn’t seen in a quite some time ever since their ANBU stint together, but Tenzou stands tall and strong in the face of the unspoken threats by Kakashi, and replies.

“As your fellow Shinobi, and as your junior,” Tenzou starts, voice a little shaky at first but slowly solidifies and steadies as he continues, “As your friend. I’m asking this of you, don’t do this any longer.” 

Kakashi can’t meet that pleading gaze, that gaze so full of care and concern and worry, that gaze that carries him in high regard- no, he doesn’t deserve any of those things. 

Kakashi turns away, and escapes to another training field, leaving Tenzou alone in the rain. 

That night, dreams of Rin and Sensei and Obito recur over and over, as they whisper, ‘friend, I’m your friend, I’m your friend,’ endlessly like a broken record.

 

* * *

 

.

.

The following weeks aren’t any better. 

The days would consist of Kakashi trying to a couple of hours touching up the Hatake compound, abandoning the task once the reminder of how he drove his father to his death comes back too fast and too hard a hit, and then spending the rest of the day training by himself until even his bones felt worn down, and then sneaking over to Obito’s ward at the dead of the night to check if Obito’s chest was still rising.

_Anything to stop the dreams._ Kakashi breathes out slowly, breathes in, and ignores exhaustion wearing him thin.

By the end of the following weeks, and countless (useless) interventions by his students, Tsunade decides to step in. 

“Hatake.”

“Hokage-sama,” Kakashi replies neutrally.

Tsunade sighed.

“I’m too old for this, Hatake. I really, really am. You need to stop doing this to yourself, it’s not going to make him wake up faster.” 

Kakashi is silent. 

He knows that. He has known that from the start. _But it’s his fault, it’s always his fault, he has to atone for his sins, and this, this is nothing. This is nothing compared to what he went through, this is nothing to what they went through. This is what he deserves, this is what he gets, it’s all his fault._

“He would want you to be happy.” Tsunade tries for a different angle.

It hits him harder than he thought it would. 

“You don’t know that. He’s unresponsive in the intensive care unit.” Kakashi says quietly.

The unsaid ‘ _Obito never wanted anything to do with me, anyway’_ hangs heavily and weighs down the atmosphere, an unseen barrier between Tsunade and Kakashi.

Tsunade slams her fist on her table. 

“Why do you think,” she hisses in a dangerously low voice, “he gave up and helped us to fight Madara? Why do you think he helped _you?_ Stop making this all about yourself, you idiot, stop making it about your failures.”

Kakashi falters a little now.

_Why exactly did Obito defect from Madara?_

“Hatake, I want you to take on a mission for me. As you know, some of our villagers… still hold prejudice towards the Uchiha. As soon as he wakes up, I want you to keep an eye over him.” Tsunade makes a little frustrated noise as soon as she sees Kakashi staring at her, “I mean it, Hatake. Take this mission as a chance for reconciliation.”

Still a little shell-shocked and numb from the dressing down he got from the hokage, Kakashi turned to leave as soon as he was dismissed.

Perhaps a little time alone would help him think.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s obliterated yet another log. 

Kakashi looks up, and sees Sasuke hovering near the woods. 

“I’ve never apologised, have I?” Sasuke looks distinctly uncomfortable as he speaks, uneasy and tense. 

“After I left Konoha… I’ve done a lot of things. A lot of those… I don’t regret.” 

“I knew.” Kakashi replies, turning to face him.

“I’m sorry for causing you so much grief. And I’m sorry for causing Naruto so much grief.” Sask.’s breath catches in his throat, as he admits openly.

Kakashi scans his face for any sign of deceit, any sign of an ulterior plan or motive, because the Sasuke he knows, is a cold-blooded and unrepentant murderer.

And he is surprised to find nothing but sincerity, and perhaps even remorse. 

“I know you don’t trust me. But Naruto and I… we had a talk after the war.” Sasuke looks like he would want to be anywhere else other than here, “He said I should seek your forgiveness.” 

“Do you really?” Kakashi asks coolly, watching Sasuke for any change, any crack in his facade. 

“I… want to.”

“Earn it.” Kakashi says simply, and turns away from Sasuke. “You’ve hurt too many of my precious people for me to trust you now.” 

“That would be adequate for me at this point,” Sasuke breathes out, and then adds in more solemnly, “Thank you.” 

He leaves, and Kakashi feels a little more broken.

Kakashi isn’t a person that should be thanked. 

 

* * *

 

 

“He’s awake, Kakashi sensei. He’s awake!” Naruto yells as he dashes into the Hatake’s cemetery.

Kakashi immediately looks up from where he had been busy cleaning the graves and feeling a little more miserable as he sees his parents’ names, and straightens up immediately.

Less than a second later, he’s in Obito’s ward, Room 22. 

Two nurses are attending to Obito, helping him to sit up and giving him water, looking a little shocked as Kakashi with his long, overgrown hair and his untidy uniform that smells like cemetery dust appears and climbs in through the window. 

Kakashi freezes on the window sill, as he sees Obito turn around slowly to stare at him.

For a moment, he hears nothing. It’s as if the world stops, and the two of them just stares at each other, freezing and taking in each other appearances.

Something akin to joy, fear and relief floods his senses, as he slowly walks over to touch Obito’s face, because surely, this was _all just a dream._

But no, Obito’s face is warm and flushed, a very, very clear signal that he is indeed alive.

He takes in Obito’s appearance seriously, and actually registers how much Obito has changed from his younger years; Obito was now a broad-shouldered, his baby fat evening out to give him a well-built structure, and even despite his weakened state, with all the assuredness of a veteran and the confidence only warriors have. Black eyes (a goddamned break from those red, sharing eyes in his nightmares), and equally black hair frame his slightly tan face, and even with scars twisting up the right side of his face, Kakashi can still find Obito breathtaking.

Kakashi lets out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding, a small puff of air and his tense shoulders relax.

And then, he leaves. 

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re cleared for house rest, no strenuous physical activity for at least 2 months, and definitely no training for another month.” The nurse gives him a long suffering sigh at the end of it, and shuffles her papers as she hands Obito his belongings. 

_I wonder how many other ninja disobeyed her orders,_ Obito mused quietly as he thankedthe nurse, _probably way, way more than that sigh tells me._

As he steps out of the building for the first time in what, three or four months?, and feels a little disorientated for a second. 

Nothing looks like it used to be, with all the new buildings and development that happened after the war levelled the village. 

The people, as usual, still give him hateful looks and mutter underneath their breath, whether it was because of his actions that caused the entire world to go to war and its casualties, or whether it was because of the scars carving through his right side of his face, he ignores them.

But for the first time, there were actually people who recognised him as the jinchuuriki of the ten tails, the one who felled Madara in the war, mainly ninjas from the younger generation.

It feels… surprisingly empty, receiving attention he craved so much when he was younger. He knew he was drastically different now, no longer that happy-go-lucky boy from before. 

_A twisted, bitter man,_ a voice sneers inside his head.

He pushes the thought away and focuses on walking instead. 

Obito has no idea where his feet are taking him, but wherever that place is, he was fine with just going along with the flow, after being caught in so many things the past decade.

Especially after Kakashi left him the first day he woke up. 

_He hates you, he hates you for everything you did, he doesn’t want to be near you._

Shaking his head even harder to clear his mind, Obito looks up and stops in his tracks.

It’s the memorial. Obito curses his feet, curses his subconscious mind as he sees Kakashi standing alone, wrapped in a striped scarf and his mask, talking to the memorial stone. 

His heart drops even further when he sees Kakashi talking to where Rin’s name was carved. 

“-and he woke up a week ago. I don’t know how to face him, Rin, I really don’t. I hope things are going well with you, see you-“ Kakashi turns around immediately as soon as he senses Obito’s chakra, freezing in his steps as he sees Obito.

A second later, he tries to flee. 

“Oh no _you don’t,”_ Obito snarls, and catches Kakashi by his long, trailing scarf. 

He throws out his fist, putting all his might into it, and swings it towards Kakashi’s face, and feels oddly satiated as a noticeable crack could be heard the moment it collided with Kakashi’s face. 

“Don’t you _dare_ run away from me again, you bastard,” Obito grabs Kakashi by his collar with both his hands, and shakes as violently as he can, yelling into his face, “don’t you dare to try to avoid me again!”

Obito feels his voice rise, “Do you know how much I hate you for killing Rin? You don’t deserve her as your teammate, you don’t even deserve to talk to her grave. You couldn’t even keep her alive, you killed her with your own hands! How could you, you fucking bastard?! How could you let her die? Do you know, how many fucking months, years I spent in order to make her come back? And you,” Obito raises one, trembling finger, his voice turning hysterical, in Kakashi’s face, “You just blew through them all.” 

Obito deflates, and breathes in a deep breath of air, trying to calm himself down.

“I hated you. I still do. But Rin told me about what happened, Rin told me every single thing that happened that day, when I almost died and was lingering in the void before I got reincarnated again.” Obito doesn’t remember when tears had started to fall from his face, how they left burning trails in their wake, and when his body started to tremble. 

“She said that you tried your best. She said you were prepared to give up your life for her. She said she killed herself to protect you, to protect this village. She told me, ‘bito, don’t hate Kakashi for doing something he never intended to happen. And can you imagine what I felt after that? How I hated you for years and years, only for it to all go to waste?” Obito shrieks, now abandoning all attempt to remain calm. 

Feeling his heart shatter a little more with every word Obito utters, Kakashi, still dazed and confused and hurting a little, offers him a very meek and quiet, “I’m sorry.” 

And suddenly, all that emotion he’s held back the past few months- Grief, sorrow and regret, make their appearance all at once. 

How desperately he wished for Obito to wake up, how crazy his nightmares made him feel, how he hated himself as he tormented himself with his father’s death and Rin’s death and everyone’s death- it pours out in a torrent of rain, it sweeps him off like a tsunami, leaving only destruction and casualties in its wake.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for doing everything wrong.” Kakashi murmurs to Obito, closing the gap between them, his hands unmoving, untouching, in acceptance and remorse. 

( And after that, long after Obito’s outburst and Kakashi’s apology, Kakashi brings Obito back to his tiny apartment, and ignores the way Obito climbs into his tiny bed alongside him. Both of them are exhausted, and both of them are scared, but at least, at least they could move on now.)

 

* * *

 

 

Things pretty much go back to normal afterwards.

Or as normal as it can get when you have your old friend, whom you presumably thought dead around 15 years ago, struggles to adapt to his new lifestyle from his previous international terrorist life. As normal as your boss forces you to take in a previous fugitive. 

Kakashi still goes on missions, and Obito goes on some too, but not without Kakashi being assigned to watch over him. 

These few days, its been pretty harrowing, getting a bigger apartment for the both of them (he made Tsunade pay for it, if it was a mission she assigned him, she sure as hell would have to pay for it), getting new furniture, and getting a new bed for Obito. 

From his previous few days with Obito though, Kakashi regrets buying a new bed for Obito, when all he does is to crawl into Kakashi’s bed, complaining of t.he cold and sometimes, on quieter nights, admits that he doesn’t want to face his nightmares alone

Right now, Kakashi wakes up groggily as he finds Obito thrashing about on his bed, squashed and pressed against the wall, because anytime you try to fit two fully grown men in one tiny single person bed is a recipe for disaster. 

This time, he’s never seen Obito thrash this much, and even crying this time. 

Mildly uncomfortable at the lack of space, Kakashi catches Obito in his arms and shakes him awake. 

Obito lets out a scream. 

Still panicking, Kakashi shakes Obito harder, hoping that it would wake him up faster, whispering, “Obito, Obito, wake up, it’s just a dream. Obito!”

And finally, gods, finally, Obito wakes up. 

He’s still tense and wary from his dream, and still crying, but at least he’s awake now.

At a loss for better words, Kakashi doesn’t say anything, but instead, offers Obito an awkward, cramped hug, because from what he saw Sakura do to Naruto when he’s crying, it usually works. 

And it does, because Obito relaxes in his embrace, his body goes limp and his breathing evens out.

“Thanks.” Obito murmurs, once his body stops trembling entirely.

Kakashi doesn’t answer, and simply nods as he tries to get another hour of sleep before his next mission in the morning.

 

* * *

 

 

The moment he comes back, hot, sweaty and grimy from his latest mission, he spots Obito at the gate. 

His teammate for this mission nudges him, and grins as he says, “Looks like our captain has a secret admirer after all, huh.” 

“Not that I can speak much for you, Genma,” Kakashi counters, rolling his eyes. 

Even after all these years, his old ANBU squad was still as close as they were when they were still assigned to assassinate Fire lord’s relatives and diplomats.

But it’s nice, Kakashi admits, to have a person to return home to. No matter how much Obito had tried to kill him the past few years, being able to return home to a friend was… heartwarming, in a way. 

As he reaches the gates, he sees Obito laughing with the gate guard, Sai, if he’s not wrong, and feels something twist inside of him.

This Obito, the one who laughs too loudly and too much, the one who has a heart that’s big enough to encompass everyone, the one closest to what Kakashi remembers of Obito before the mission. 

Other days, the quiet, silently raging one, the crying one, those he sees more often, and those are the ones he’s more afraid of. 

“Hey,” Kakashi says lightly, nodding his head at Sai’s greeting, “what do you think of ramen for lunch?” 

He sees Obito’s face light up slightly, and snickers lightly as he hears Obito saying, “Talk to you later, and trust me, that Haruno girl’ll swoon for you after my tips.” 

Obito catches him snickering, and asks, “What?”

“Your tips have never worked for the longest time, idiot.” Kakashi doesn’t know whether Obito can see his face through the mask, and hopes faintly that Obito can’t see the nostalgic, slightly sad smile that spreads on his face. 

Obito hums noncommittally, and smiles.

“We could have had this a long time ago, couldn’t we?” Obito is quiet, regretful, and Kakashi accepts his silent invitation. 

Kakashi’s pinkie finds its way around Obito’s, and feels himself assured by the calmness that resides in both of them.

“I’ll take what we have right now.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can assume they get together.
> 
> sorry its my first time writing any Kakashi/Obito so if the characterisation is a bit wonky feel free to tell me!


End file.
